hablando con los taxistas

I've been slightly lazy these past couple weeks and have taken taxis more often than I usually do. It's just been so blistering hot that I can't stand the thought of the 20 minute walk to my house up a mountain. I can feel my calves burning with each step up the practically vertical incline. That may be a bit of an over exaggeration, but not by much! I always like taking taxis though because it provides a great chance to practice my Spanish. Lately, I've had the funniest and most interesting conversations with the taxistas. My friend Ally lives a couple blocks from my house so we share taxis a lot. The first question the taxi drivers ask without fail after I tell them where we're going is, where are you from? We tell them Los Estados Unidos, I say Kansas and Ally says Carolina de Norte. This has confused the last couple drivers. For some reason, they cannot fathom that Ally & I are from the same country. They always try to guess what country Ally's from, even though she just told them North Carolina, in the US. Ally's African American and it just apparently throws some people off when we say we're from the same country. One taxi driver kept asking if she was from Cuba after we dropped her off. Then he asked me about racism in the US and if I liked racism. I was very confused & had to ask him three times to repeat himself to make sure I understood correctly. He had just seen me give my friend, of a different race, a hug and say, in Spanish, call me tomorrow. I told him I didn't like it at all and he agreed. It was a very bizaare conversation! Then a few days later we took another taxi and the driver asked where we were from & we repeated almost word for word what we tell everyone else. Then he said, oh, you're from the country with the new president! and tried to pronounce Obama's name but couldn't quite get there. I was trying to make conversation, and figuring that it's a pretty safe bet that a majority of people in other countries aren't fans of Bush, I said, si, me gusta mucho mas de Bush. He didn't seem to care if I like Obama more than Bush or not, he had a question he wanted answered. He proceeded to ask, "Why in a country of pure guerros is the president not a guerro?" I was very confused because guerro usually refers to a white person or someone with really light skin and here I was in the cab with a girl who's skin is darker than the taxi driver who just said she was from the US. Obviously, it isn't a country of "pure guerros!" I tried to tell him the US had all different types of people. And then I was left wondering why my president should have to look like I do?

My host mom loves Obama though. Everytime he's on the news she always comments on either a) how much she likes him b) how handsome he is or c) what an eloquent speaker he is. My host sister said he reminds her of the nice uncle that you can tell anything to because he always looks like he is listening intently. I thought that was nice.